Letter to the editor: Gun-free zones keep out only good guys with guns

First, let me address letter writer Eric Van Note’s statement that the Charleston, Holly Hill and Chattanooga shootings “are fitting cases to test the NRA’s favorite retort: ‘The best remedy for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ ”

I agree with Mr. Van Note that these are fitting tests, but I come to an entirely different conclusion.

Each of the three incidents occurred in a gun-free zone. The good guys with guns obeyed the rules and either stayed away or went in unarmed. There were no “good guys with guns” to put a stop to the carnage.

Gun-free zones keep out only the good guys with guns. The bad guys love gun-free zones because they have little fear of being stopped.

Contrary to Mr. Van Note’s last statement, I believe our Founding Fathers did have a high “level of armament” in mind.

They had just come off a long war for independence, where, in many cases, the citizen soldier supplied his personal “state-of-the-art” firearm. They saw this as crucial to the survival of our country – and it still is.

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mainereason

No matter what you think our founding fathers meant, having people walk into churches and movie theaters to randomly massacre the others there certainly wasn’t on their wish list for our future society. I think we’ve given the “we need more guns” argument a few decades too many. Why must we be virtually the ONLY country in the world that continues to arm its civilians, especially in light of the continued blood shed by literally countless victims. We need to change something. Doing so by arming more people, to me, is insane.

xcalibur1066

Check out the crimes stats in Australia since they disarmed their citizens. Good stuff.

mainereason

You mean the one that homicide rates went up after the ban by 300% in Victoria?

xcalibur1066

Find which stats you want.

xcalibur1066

So.. If we confiscate hand guns and other privately owned guns from lawful owners, we will see an increase in the homicide rates? Got it thanks.

mainereason

No if we keep people armed as they please with fewer and fewer regulations we will continue to massacre our own people as a complete outlier to the rest of the developed world…Since 1997 firearm homicides are now down 59% in Australia…

xcalibur1066

Did you know that Australia does not have a Bill of Rights?

Your earlier stats showed that homicides increased after gun confiscation. Does it make a difference to the family of homicide victims if their loved one was killed by a gun, a knife or knuckles?

mainereason

No it doesn’t but going into a movie theater and killing 12 and wounding 70 with a knife or your knuckles might be a wee bit more difficult than pulling a trigger.

xcalibur1066

A bomb would do the trick.

Or a knife :

“It took just 10 minutes for a man armed with a kitchen knife to unleash terror in a Japanese elementary school in a stabbing spree that left eight school children dead and injured 21 other people.”

“China executes Uighurs convicted of mass stabbing

The three men were accused of taking part in attack that killed 31 people at train station in Kunming last year.”

Have you noticed how dangerous Gun Free Zones are in the US. I avoid them.

mainereason

kind of an oxymoron huh. dangerous because of the guns? hmmmm… You are welcome to your opinion that more guns will make us safer but from my perspective its not working out that well. ….

xcalibur1066

Neither is gun control.. see just about every major metropolitan area that has strict gun laws. Guns are not the issue… People are.

Most of the mass shootings in the US have happened in Gun Free Zones. The shooter in SC bypassed a college campus when he found out the campus security was armed. The Aurora shooter passed 7 theaters until arriving at the one that has a “Gun Free Zone” policy. The GFZ advertise that law abiding citizens will unarmed.

I will agree to this : remove all the guns from bad guys first and I will agree to surrender mine (if I in fact have a gun).

Christopher White

While I agree to a degree, there should be caveats in there. We are not ‘virtually the ONLY country in the world that continues to arm its civilians’. To be correct you need to add ‘developed’ or ‘first world’ or ‘democratic’ between ONLY and country. There are dozens of countries where those running around with a ‘high level of armament’ include not only the military, and police but also include sectarian groups, private militias, drug gangs, businesses, private security companies, child soldiers and anyone else who can afford a weapon. Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, El Salvador…

Adam_Romero

Lots of countries allow citizens to have arms. Even Canada and European countries. Some ban handguns and some require lots of licensing and paperwork and lots of regulation, but it’s incorrect that nobody else has guns. Especially shotguns and rifles.lots of countries do.